Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(100)
Chapelwood. It’s hard to explain.
In the middle of a cleared semicircle stood a large building, the centerpiece, if you will. It was one part cathedral, one part courthouse, one part antebellum gothic mansion. Not a single light burned in a single window, and a row of four white columns held up a large portico. It looked like a grinning skull with a row of long, wide stairs spilling forth from its mouth, or maybe that was only my imagination—combined with the stark, sudden light from the automobile in the otherwise pitch-black woods. This light showed everything in hard relief, exaggerating corners and crevices that would go unseen in the daylight, and I knew that—I believed it and understood it—yet I could not escape the sordid terror of the chimneys, three or four of them, jutting from the gabled and turreted roof like so many blocky, twisted horns.
It was a massive structure, though how massive I couldn’t gauge; and on either side it was flanked by smaller outbuildings: a garage, I think, and some storage sheds, and what looked like it once was a barn.
The air was dark, thick, and miserably humid around us. It pressed against the windows and doors, as if forbidding us to exit the vehicle . . . or else we only didn’t want to, and we found it hard to muster the courage to do so. A bit of both, I’d like to believe. Otherwise, I’m entirely a coward, and like all men (surely women as well), I’d prefer to think otherwise.
“It’s nearly Halloween,” Lizbeth said so softly I scarcely heard her. “Only a few more weeks until that dreadful night, but I’ve never been anyplace so warm, so late in the year.”
“Nor have I. Not in recent recollection, at any rate.”
“I don’t see anyone, do you? I don’t hear any dogs. The spirit said they’re all underground . . . Could that be true? Do you think? Surely the reverend has left someone to stand guard.”
I shrugged, and kept my hands on the wheel, my foot on the brake. “If they’re all in this together, and if they honestly believe they’ve nothing to fear . . . they could feel perfectly safe down below. Who in their right mind would storm this place, anyway?”
“No one. But we must screw our courage to the sticking place.”
I sulked, though it was no doubt unbecoming. “I’ve never really understood that turn of phrase. I don’t care if it was Shakespeare who coined it, it’s not terribly elegant.”
She reached for her door latch, and pulled it. “No, it isn’t. But the time has come.” The fastener uncoupled, and she swung one leg outside—quickly, a hasty gesture undertaken before she had time to think about what she was doing.
I put the car in park and dithered another short moment. “Get the lanterns from the trunk,” I suggested before killing the engine, and with it, our only source of light.
The lid creaked when she lifted it. Every sound was a gunshot, a cannonball, a Fourth of July fireworks display—even though the rough hum of the motor did its best to provide a muffling blanket of neutral noise.
Surely we’d be heard or spotted at any second. Surely our time was limited. Surely they’d come for us, bursting from the doors and windows like so many rats.
The lid came down again with a firm but restrained clack, and behind me, a small pop of light said that Lizbeth had lit a match. Otherwise, Chapelwood was dark and quiet. So dark, so quiet—except for the flare of one little match lighting one little lantern, and the fizzle and snap of the flame as it caught, warmed, and grew.
I pushed the keys into my pocket, and shoved them down deep. They were warm and hard against my thigh, but I liked the pressure, even the discomfort of it. They reminded me that there was a way out of here after all, when we eventually retrieve Ruth and must flee with the Reverend Davis upon our tail.
Who was I fooling? No one. My keys were a rabbit’s foot, a four-leafed clover—wielded vainly and impotently against the danger to come.
Lizbeth held the light aloft, a talisman of another, more practical kind. “Shall we?”
“The front door?”
“Let’s see what it gets us.”
I’d say that she led the way, but in truth I walked beside her. She held the light, and that felt like leading—since I couldn’t go anywhere without her, or without that small totem of hope. I looked back at the car, sitting forlorn in that clearing at the foot of the big old house, or church, or whatever it’d been originally intended as. The engine popped and cooled beneath the hood, but otherwise there was no sound but our footsteps, crunching through the dirt, leaves, and grassy spots on the way to those stretched-out steps.
Even the insects had left us by then. So had the moon, the stars, and everything else we might have found reassuring. When I gazed up to the firmament, I saw only the blank black surface of a slate washed down with a wet rag—but without any of the polish or texture. It was nothingness, that’s all. It wasn’t even empty.
We took the steps one at a time. They were filthy, each and every one—no one had swept them in heaven knew how long, so I took some comfort from that. However these men came and went on a regular basis, this wasn’t it. We weren’t likely to encounter any resistance.
We hadn’t exactly arrived with the utmost stealth, and our little handheld light may as well have been a chandelier in an outhouse, for it easily stood out that much.
When we reached the double doors, we paused at that threshold and examined them—Lizbeth running the lantern up and down, giving us all the details. These doors were carved with scenes . . . no, not scenes. Maps, more like. Or closer still to what I’m attempting to explain: They were illustrated with astrological diagrams. Over here, I saw a series of dots that once connected, indicated the constellation Capricorn. Over there, the circle and tail of the great lion. Across the front, the vaguely sinister mark of the scorpion.